Original Airdate: March 27, 1974
Written by: Stephen J. Cannell (script) and Roy Huggins (story)
Directed by: Richard T. Heffron
An elderly vagrant (Bill Quinn) takes a bus to the waterfront and stays on until the driver kicks him off. He’s there for a meeting, but seeing no one he wanders under a pier and sits down to have a drink. Just then, Jerry Grimes (William Smith) sneaks up behind him and strangles him with a necktie.
LAPD Detective Dennis Becker (Joe Santos) tries to flag the case, but his superior dismisses it as a non-starter, so it goes into the “Unsolved” file. A couple of months after the crime Sara Butler (Lindsay Wagner) hires Jim Rockford (James Garner, playing the role for the first time) to solve the case. The victim was her father, who slid into alcoholism and depression after her mother’s death. She’s put off by Jim’s money-first approach, but claims that the money won’t be a problem.
They start by interviewing Sara’s antagonistic little brother Nick (Bill Mumy), who works in a pharmacy. Mildred Elias (Nita Talbot), a young widow, has been ordering all her medications from this pharmacy even though there are many closer to her home. Furthermore, she’s offered to put Nick through medical school.
Through digging, Rockford learns that Mildred used to be a dancer and that she became wealthy by marrying a millionaire who died shortly thereafter. An interview with the Clark County coroner (Michael Lerner) confirms that his arteries were in bad shape and he died of natural causes, however.
Jim’s investigations result in multiple run-ins with Jerry Grimes, who finally tries to kill both Rockford and Sara in the Nevada desert, against Mildred Elias’s wishes. By this time Jim has figured out that Harry Butler stood in as the groom at Mildred’s sham wedding, and that his attempting to tap her for more money is what got him killed by Jerry. While Jerry is trying to shoot Jim and Sara from the air, Jim shoots down his plane. The Clark County police arrest Jerry, but also Jim on material witness grounds and because of the plane shooting.
Tropes present in this episode include:
- Dead Person Impersonation: Harry Butler impersonated Mr. Elias when the latter died before he and Mildred could be married.
- Downer Ending: If this had stayed as just a TV detective film the last thing the audience would have seen would be Jim going back to jail for a nonfatal shooting in self-defense. Luckily, the subsequent TV series shows that he didn’t stay in for long.
- Early-Installment Weirdness: For the most part the pilot is similar to what the show would be, but there are a few exceptions:
- Introduced here, Jim Rockford makes his first appearance a few scenes in. In most episodes he shows up in the first or second scene.
- Aside from being played by a different actor (Robert Donley instead of Noah Beery, Jr.) Rocky has a shaggier appearance, with longish hair and a beard. He's also more mercenary here, and at one point (unsuccessfully) tries to run a minor, low-level con on his son, something that would be unthinkable in the series itself.
- During the standard answering machine bit the camera is on the exterior of Jim’s trailer rather than the telephone.
- Family-Friendly Stripper: Played for Laughs. Jerry follows Jim into a seamy club where the onstage act is a woman walking a tightrope in a sequined bikini she never takes off. She’s followed by an adorable trained dog act. (The location was a real-life British-style music hall.)
- Feet-First Introduction: Jerry Grimes’s fancy shoes are the first thing we see of Jerry Grimes as he’s tracking Harry Butler.
- Gold Digger: Mildred Elias was one. The rich guy she intended to marry died before the wedding could go off, which kicks off the plot.
- Incredibly Obvious Tail: During their bathroom confrontation Jim tells Jerry that he’d noticed the tail the previous day but couldn’t believe anyone would be stupid enough to follow him in a red Caddy convertible.
- Info Dump: Handled pretty naturally, but the dialogue has to introduce several facts about Jim Rockford that regular audiences would take for granted.
- He was sent to prison for a robbery he insisted he was innocent of, and he was telling the truth.
- The governor eventually vacated his sentence, and he used to keep the pardon framed on his wall.
- He only takes murder cases if they’re in the unsolved file, because digging into active cases would bring him into conflict with the cops. (The brass still aren’t happy, because if he solves an unsolved case it makes them look stupid.)
- Mustache Vandalism: While calling Sara from a payphone Jim flips through the Yellow Pages and sees that someone has drawn a goatee on his ad. He accidentally rips the page while erasing it.
- Next Thing They Knew: Jim and Sara start an affair in the back half of the pilot movie. Aside from the obvious motives, it’s suggested that he’s moving the case to the personal column to free her from having to make payments that would be financially ruinous for her.
- Psycho for Hire: Jerry Grimes is a stone cold psycho, and even threatens to strangle his employer Mildred in order to bend her to his will.
- Red Herring: As soon as Jim leaves his office, the Vegas coroner calls Mildred Elias, telling her all about the grilling and obviously crushing on her hard. While this could be read as evidence that he lied about her husband dying of natural causes, that part—excluding his being her “husband”—turns out to be true.
- Reverse Whodunnit: Unusually for this show, Jerry’s murder of Harry Butler is shown onscreen so there’s no mystery about that, although other aspects of the case only come to light gradually.
- Smoking Hot Sex: After Jim and Sara kiss, the next we see of them is him enjoying a cigarette with her asleep in his arms.
- Standard Hollywood Strafing Procedure: In a scene reminiscent of North By Northwest, Grimes flies over Jim and Sara in a plane one of his cronies is piloting and shoots at them from the passenger seat. Jim disables the plane by shooting the fuel tank, and it explains just after the two criminals have vacated.
